The pieces are coming together for the towering, launch-pad-like display of NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour.

Three large parts from two solid rocket boosters are now on a cross country road trip in preparation for the planned 2019 exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

The components, two 7.5-foot-tall (2.3 meter) aft skirts that each sat at the base of a booster, and a 10-foot-tall (3 m) frustum that sat below the nose cap at the top, were loaded onto trucks at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida last Tuesday (Dec. 6) and are slated to arrive at the space agency's Armstrong Flight Research Center in southern California later this week, on (or about) Thursday (Dec. 15).

There, the skirts and frustum will join other solid rocket motor segments delivered in August 2012. They will be held in storage until they are needed to assemble the vertical stack for the space shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center's new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center in Los Angeles' Exposition Park.

The space shuttle Endeavour exhibit at the California Science Center is getting a "boost" in the form of two very large, flight-worthy additions.

Orbital ATK and NASA are donating a pair of solid rocket boosters for the Los Angeles museum's vertical display of the retired orbiter. The two boosters, together with NASA's last existing built-for-flight external tank, will be mounted to Endeavour in the Science Center's new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, creating the world's only fully-authentic exhibit of a space shuttle in its launch configuration.

Photo: A pair of flight-worthy solid rocket boosters, like these two seen in 2010 for the last mission of the space shuttle Endeavour, are being donated by Orbital ATK and NASA to the California Science Center for Endeavour's vertical display. (NASA/Ben Cooper)

I didn't realize there were flight worthy Shuttle SRB's left, I'd thought everything had been repurposed for SLS by now (i.e. steel cases). What were the showstoppers preventing that set of boosters plus ET-94 from being used for an STS-136? (Presumably with Endeavour?)

In any case I am going to LA and will pay another visit to Endeavour when this exhibit opens (2018? 2019?).

« Last Edit: 01/11/2017 03:33 AM by Bubbinski »

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I'll even excitedly look forward to "flags and footprints" and suborbital missions. Just fly...somewhere.

Boosters to be Part of Only Existing Full Stack of the Space Shuttle on Display

Dulles, Virginia, 28 March 2017 – Orbital ATK (NYSE: OA), a global leader in aerospace and defense technologies, and NASA have donated a set of flight-worthy solid rocket boosters from the Space Shuttle Program to the California Science Center to display with a full-up exhibit of the Endeavour orbiter and external tank.

“We take great pride in our 30-plus years of participation in the Space Shuttle Program,” said Charlie Precourt, Vice President and General Manager of Orbital ATK’s Propulsion Systems Division. “We’re pleased and honored that we can contribute hardware to this amazing exhibit at the California Science Center.”

The California Science Center Foundation’s goal for this exhibit is to preserve and display the only existing full stack of genuine solid rocket boosters, orbiter, and external tank for Endeavour’s ultimate display in a vertical position in the future Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

After NASA awarded the last existing flight worthy external tank (ET-94) to the Science Center Foundation in 2015, it became evident it would be critical to have a flight-worthy set of solid rocket boosters, not only for authenticity but also for seismic structural safety. Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center Project Director Dennis Jenkins made the request to Orbital ATK.

The booster cases that Orbital ATK is giving to the California Science Center have flown on 74 space shuttle flights and have been part of 32 ground tests. One case is new.

“As for the non-motor parts of the booster, we sourced a set of flight-worthy aft skirts and frustums from NASA surplus and a set of forward skirts that were used for tests for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) Program that are currently in Utah at Orbital ATK,” said Jenkins. “Orbital ATK and NASA are providing most of the smaller parts, like booster separation motors, from surplus.”

Construction on the space shuttle exhibit is expected to begin in the summer of 2017.

I didn't realize there were flight worthy Shuttle SRB's left, I'd thought everything had been repurposed for SLS by now (i.e. steel cases). What were the showstoppers preventing that set of boosters plus ET-94 from being used for an STS-136? (Presumably with Endeavour?)

In any case I am going to LA and will pay another visit to Endeavour when this exhibit opens (2018? 2019?).

Funding for the flight itself; casting of the SRB prop segments (which wasn't done); massive effort to convert ET-94 with all post-Columbia safety upgrades; time; effort; desire to move on from Shuttle quickly.